Dear Parish Family,

The most obvious take away from the parable of the Rich Fool seems to be: you can not take it with you. However that is a little bit of old wisdom, barely needing Christian revelation. It is a noticeable human fact currently clearly specified in the Book of Ecclesiastes: "Right here is one that has actually struggled with wisdom as well as expertise and ability, and yet to the one who has not labored over it, he needs to leave all his life’s work." The Lukan parable goes much deeper than the strong facts of human death and also the transiency of material ownerships. So what is so special about this parable that we might be missing?

The opening statement of the parable strangely is,” The land of a rich man produced abundantly… Whatever his contribution was of sowing the seeds and tilling the earth, he did not create the land, nor the favorable weather or the fecundity of the seeds. In the abundance of the harvest he forgets the real giver, ‘God’ and the many people of his tribe that helped him to get a bountiful harvest. Yet again he is busy preparing security for his “soul” by storing the plentiful in his new barns.
The man has also lost all the sense of stewardship that flows from knowing that he lives in a ‘covenantal’ relationship between human beings, creation and God. This landowner speaks too easily of “my crops” and forgets that material things cannot satisfy the spiritual self and his selfishness has blinded him about the possibility of imminent death.

In our culture, enough is never enough. We’re supposed to always want more than we have. It’s like Lake Wobegon from Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion, where “all the children are above average.” No one wants to be just average because it is considered a failure of competence or ambition. In our media saturated culture the commercials tell us that we need and deserve luxuries, fantastic cars, strong trucks, and trendy clothing. They do not merely assert that we need these things; they help to invent a need for them.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, asks us to seek neither riches nor poverty, neither long life nor short life, neither health nor sickness; rather pray for the strength to seek only what God wants and to ask only what He would have us do for His “greater glory.” The best way to avoid the temptations that come with various material situations of riches or poverty is to maintain a prayerful relationship with the Lord and seek His guidance to reach His glory.

  Fr. Thomas Kunnel C.O.